I have no claims—But let me draw the picture, dear Chevalier. Here was a discredited, dissolute fellow whose life was worth a pin to nobody. Tired of the husks and the swine, and all his follies grown stale by over-use, he takes the advice of a good gentleman, and joins the standard of work and sacrifice. What greater luxury shall man ask? If this be not running the full scale of life's enjoyment, pray you what is? The world loves contrasts. The deep-dyed sinner raising the standard of piety is picturesque. If, charmed by his own new virtues, he is constant in his enthusiasm, behold a St. Augustine! Everything is with the returned prodigal—the more so if he be of the notorious Vaufontaines, who were ever saints turned sinners, or sinners turned saints.
Tell me, my good friend, where is room for pride in me? I am getting far more out of life than I deserve; it is not well that you and others should think better of me than I do of myself. I do not pretend that I dislike it, it is as balm to me. But it would seem that the world is monstrously unjust. One day when I'm grown old—I cannot imagine what else Fate has spared me for—I shall write the Diary of a Sinner, the whole truth. I shall tell how when my peasant fighters were kneeling round me praying for success, even thanking God for me, I was smiling in my glove—in scorn of myself, not of them, Chevalier, no,—no, not of them! The peasant's is the true greatness. Everything is with the aristocrat; he has to kick the great chances from his path; but the peasant must go hunting them in peril. Hardly snatching sustenance from Fate, the peasant fights into greatness; the aristocrat may only win to it by rejecting Fate's luxuries. The peasant never escapes the austere teaching of hard experience, the aristocrat the languor of good fortune. There is the peasant and there am I. Voila! enough of Detricand of Vaufontaine. . . . The Princess Guida and the child, are they—
So the letter ran, and the Chevalier read it aloud to Guida up to the point where her name was writ. Afterwards Guida would sit and think of what Detricand had said, and of the honesty of nature that never allowed him to deceive himself. It pleased her also to think she had in some small way helped a man to the rehabilitation of his life. He had said that she had helped him, and she believed him; he had proved the soundness of his aims and ambitions; his career was in the world's mouth.
The one letter the Chevalier did not read to Guida referred to Philip. In it Detricand begged the Chevalier to hold himself in readiness to proceed at a day's notice to Paris.
So it was that when, after months of waiting, the Chevalier suddenly left St. Heliers to join Detricand, Guida did not know the object of his journey. All she knew was that he had leave from the Directory to visit Paris. Imagining this to mean some good fortune for him, with a light heart she sent him off in charge of Jean Touzel, who took him to St. Malo in the Hardi Biaou, and saw him safely into the hands of an escort from Detricand.
CHAPTER XLII
Three days later there was opened in one of the chambers of the Emperor's palace at Vienna a Congress of four nations—Prussia, Russia, Austria, and Sardinia. Detricand's labours had achieved this result at last. Grandjon-Larisse, his old enemy in battle, now his personal friend and colleague in this business, had influenced Napoleon, and the Directory through him, to respect the neutrality of the duchy of Bercy, for which the four nations of this Congress declared. Philip himself little knew whose hand had secured the neutrality until summoned to appear at the Congress, to defend his rights to the title and the duchy against those of Detricand Prince of Vaufontaine. Had he known that Detricand was behind it all he would have fought on to the last gasp of power and died on the battle-field. He realised now that such a fate was not for him— that he must fight, not on the field of battle like a prince, but in a Court of Nations like a doubtful claimant of sovereign honours.
His whole story had become known in the duchy, and though it begot no feeling against him in war-time, now that Bercy was in a neutral zone of peace there was much talk of the wrongs of Guida and the Countess Chantavoine. He became moody and saturnine, and saw few of his subjects save the old Governor-General and his whilom enemy, now his friend, Count Carignan Damour. That at last he should choose to accompany him to Vienna the man who had been his foe during the lifetime of the old Duke, seemed incomprehensible. Yet, to all appearance, Damour was now Philip's zealous adherent. He came frankly repenting his old enmity, and though Philip did not quite believe him, some perverse temper, some obliquity of vision which overtakes the ablest minds at times, made him almost eagerly accept his new partisan. One thing Philip knew: Damour had no love for Detricand, who indeed had lately sent him word that for his work in sending Fouche's men to attempt his capture in Bercy, he would have him shot, if the Court of Nations upheld his rights to the duchy. Damour was able, even if Damour was not honest. Damour, the able, the implacable and malignant, should accompany him to Vienna.
The opening ceremony of the Congress was simple, but it was made notable by the presence of the Emperor of Austria, who addressed a few words of welcome to the envoys, to Philip, and, very pointedly, to the representative of the French Nation, the aged Duc de Mauban, who, while taking no active part in the Congress, was present by request of the Directory. The Duke's long residence in Vienna and freedom from share in the civil war in France had been factors in the choice of him when the name was submitted to the Directory by General Grandjon-Larisse, upon whom in turn it had been urged by Detricand.
The Duc de Mauban was the most marked figure of the Court, the Emperor not excepted. Clean shaven, with snowy linen and lace, his own natural hair, silver white, tied in a queue behind, he had large eloquent wondering eyes that seemed always looking, looking beyond the thing he saw. At first sight of him at his court, the Emperor had said: "The stars have frightened him." No fanciful supposition, for the Duc de Mauban was as well known an astronomer as student of history and philanthropist.